“I think it’s fair to say if he had tried to throw the knife deliberately he would be hard-pressed to achieve that injury.”

Hart went to prison still professing love for the woman he wounded.

Prosecutor Martin Towers said: “They’d had an argument. The defendant was standing facing away from her at the sink in the kitchen. She was sitting on a sofa looking at her phone.

“The defendant, apparently in a temper, was throwing items from the sink over his shoulder towards her.”

He said the items launched across the room included pots and pans, but also a knife.

“That knife that was thrown towards her unfortunately embedded itself in her neck causing the very serious injury.

“This was potentially a fatal wound.”

Hart dashed in a distressed state to a neighbour saying to get an ambulance as she had been stabbed.

The neighbour tried to give her first aid and stem the blood flow with a T-shirt at the East Cleveland home. Another witness ran to an ambulance station and raised the alarm. She was rushed to hospital as her condition rapidly worsened.

Doctors found her in “a potentially life-threatening situation” with a wound to her upper neck, into the windpipe. She underwent surgery and made a good recovery, with a scar to her neck.